Using a reference from a fabulous site dedicated to offering images copyright free to artists of all media and styles, the fabulous wildlifereferencephotos.com is highly recommended and worth a visit.

This is a very cute little white tiger cub taken by Emmanuel Keller which caught my eye and I simply had to have a go!

I used all pastel pencils for this white tiger painting, including the background. I used a mixture of pitts, derwents and stabilos on my favourite brown pastelmat.

As you know, I do love eyes so this is where I started on this piece of wildlife art. The tiger cub’s eyes were quite bright but I decided to go for broke and make them really sing. the wonderful thing about pastels is, if I had overdone it, it’s so easy to rectify due to being able to layer with more colours or simply erase the unwanted colours out and start again!

I know I’ve been asked many times about the pencil extenders I use, these fit pitts and stabilos plus they even stretch to the very fat and chunky derwent pastel pencils so you don’t need to buy a different extender just for them I got these from Greatart.co.uk and they were very affordable and comfortable to use.

As you can see I work in layers. I use rough layers to block in areas, then as I add more layers and colours I become more detailed until the final layer is created using the finest pastel pencil strokes.

For the more blurry areas underneath the chin I use a fatter, flatter edged pastel, this drags the lines giving the illusion of fluffier slightly out of focus areas, I also gently pat down to knock back the hard edges of the strokes, again this all adds up to make the area look less defined so the focus remains on that ever so cute face!

As you can see, white fur isn’t just white! In fact there is actually very little white, I used it for the highlights only! In the mix were a couple of greys, pink, peach, yellow and even a bit of orange!

So after about 30 hours, here it is completed and being signed. I am now putting my full name on my art as I realise my name is searchable on the internet and will lead directly to me but my initials are not. Although my name is a little long winded, there is no way I can be mixed up with anyone else so it’s been a missed opportunity!

4 thoughts on “White tiger painting in pastel”

Liz, that’s fantastic news! Once you have it framed I would love to see a piccie of it, it’s great to see how other people frame my artwork as I can never see past my own décor! Thank you for ‘rehoming’ my kitty!! Karie

Hi kari Thought you would like to know I fell in love with this picture and purchased it from Labels in Ross on Wye last Thursday. We have chosen a grey surround frame for the picture to compliment the colours in our lounge. I am sure it will bring many hours of pleasure. Thank you Liz

Hi Kari ..Love your work…I did wonder on this white tiger cub it looks like the second gradation on the chest looks really grey, like either the print came out too dark ….or its just not blended into the next color…do you see what I mean?